


In Sum

by Ponderosa



Category: Good Omens, Supernatural
Genre: Crossover, Gen, Season/Series 03
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-20
Updated: 2009-11-20
Packaged: 2017-10-03 11:19:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,990
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ponderosa/pseuds/Ponderosa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hell has a backup plan for the Antichrist and Crowley has an overdue contract.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Sum

It was late in the day, so late that the sun hurried over the horizon for fear of holding up night. As a result of the sun's hasty retreat the sky blazed beautifully, a painted mosaic of reds and purples and other glorious colours as engineered by a pall of low-hanging smog. It should have been a Kodak moment. Unfortunately, the driver and passenger seated in the car upon the cliff weren't taking much interest in the view provided by the local Lovers' Lane.

"It's just not the same," Crowley said. The seat beneath him, covered with a leather so buttery it could have graced a slice of toast and no one would have noticed the difference in taste, sighed as he shifted about. Crowley also sighed.

"Well it's only temporary," Aziraphale reminded him.

Crowley had a few choice words on that, including how being temporary didn't change the fact no car yet had quite lived up to his former, but the radio sputtered on and cut him off before he could say anything[1].

_"CROWLEY."_

"Should I step out?" Aziraphale asked, staring at the newly installed radio. It was of a turn of the century design, and not this century either. Aziraphale found this rather comforting, as the only modern musical device he owned was a gramophone. He had briefly considered looking into one of those iPods he'd heard so much about until he discovered that they were all Crowley's idea in the first place.

_"DO YOU HAVE AN ANGEL IN THERE WITH YOU, CROWLEY?" _

Breaking out in a cold sweat, Crowley gave Aziraphale a Look[2]. "N-no, lord. Never. An angel?"

_"IF YOU DO YOU CAN TELL ME, CROWLEY." _

"Don't be absurd, lord, why would I-"

_"YOU WOULDN'T, CROWLEY." _

"Of course, lord."

_"OUR CURRENT…PROJECT…IS RUNNING ON SCHEDULE, HOWEVER, THERE IS SOMETHING YOU NEED TO DO RIGHT NOW, CROWLEY." _

"Another task for me, lord?"

_"YOUR CONTRACT IS OVERDUE FOR COLLECTION, CROWLEY." _

"M-my what, lord?"

And then Crowley knew. He slumped forward, his head banging against the steering wheel until he felt better. Relatively better, anyway. He was supposed to be on holiday.[3] Also, now his head ached a bit.

"Problem?" Aziraphale asked, after the radio had remained silent for a stretch.

"It seems there's been a mix-up with some paperwork."

*

"The tall one seems nice."

As the two young men went directly into their motel room, Crowley eeled away from the inky black shadow that was his new temporary car. He plucked his sunglasses off his head and slid them on over his eyes. No use startling the poor sods. "He's the new back-up plan for the Antichrist."

"Oh," Aziraphale said. He took a second look. "Well, he still seems nice. And I suppose the first Antichrist didn't turn out so badly."

Privately Crowley agreed, but even if Aziraphale was right, a part of him prickled at the implication that his side would do so poorly twice in their bid for the Apocalypse. He told that part to prickle less noticeably as he approached the door numbered "8" and rapped his knuckles on the wood.

One of the young men peered through the blinds. Aziraphale, being closer to the window, smiled and waved hello.

From the other side of the door came the sound of a lock being unlocked and a chain being unchained. "Can I help you?" asked the Not-Quite-Antichrist-Yet half of the Winchester duo.

Aziraphale cut in front of Crowley faster than a latte-slinging mid-level executive late for a meeting. "Is that a Heidenberg _Steganographia_?" he asked, eyes alight as he gestured to the book tucked under Sam Winchester's arm.

Sam seemed momentarily taken aback, but he produced it from under his arm. He tipped it to the side, fingers stroking along the spine where a tiny publishers mark was barely visible on the aging leather. When out and about, something in Aziraphale's manner always managed to strike a chord with the scholarly types. However when the chord-striking occurred while the subject of a rare and interesting book hung in the balance, Crowley harboured some suspicions.

"Sam, what are you doing?"

Crowley's suspicions only mounted when after only a meager handful of hushed words Sam invited Aziraphale straight in.

"Sam!"

"Dean, this is **wingsnthings44!**"

Crowley's brows shot straight to Heaven[4]. Dean's weren't far behind[5], but for a different reason, Crowley presumed.

"Is that a screenname?" Crowley asked, slowly as if in a daze or perhaps a very thick syrup. Aziraphale discovering the Internet was possibly a more sure sign of impending doom than anything Crowley's bosses could've put into motion.

"Libraries have all sorts of interesting things these days, Crowley," Aziraphale replied. The peaked colour of his cheeks suggested a blush. The flush to his neck confirmed one.

Dean's voice knifed through Crowley's woolly little cloud of disbelief. "Is that your friend?" he asked while gesturing towards Crowley. "He cool?"

"Oh yes, that's Crowley." Aziraphale fair hovered over Sam's elbow. His fingers visibly itched to touch the musty old volume. "Mm-hmm."

Aziraphale's vague assurance was shockingly good enough for Dean. "Hurry up and come in then," Dean said. He lowered the gun which he had been holding for a while but which didn't seem important enough to mention in the narrative until now.

Crowley remained on the doorstep. He cleared his throat.

"Problem?" Dean said. His eyes jumped to the line of salt which Crowley would not (and more importantly could not) cross.

Sam's head lifted sharply.

Dean's gun also lifted sharply. It resumed its job of pointing menacingly.

Meanwhile, Sam's eyes followed the same jump as Dean's and came to a similar conclusion. As a result, he dropped his book in favour of drawing a gun from the back of his pants.

"I'm here about a contract," said Crowley.

Sam cocked his gun.

"Oh my," said Aziraphale, bending to retrieve the _Steganographia_. He straightened up and blinked as he noticed all the weaponry being pointed about. "Oh my," he repeated.

*

"Look, I don't care what your boyfriend says, you're a demon."

"Aziraphale is not my-" Crowley cut off when Aziraphale happened to be saying the same thing, only with Crowley's name in place of his own. Similarly, Aziraphale had abandoned his protest. Some days it was just easier to not have to explain ones actual lack of gender.

"Dean, what if he's telling the truth." Sam had abandoned his gun when it had refused to fire and upon repeated attempts sprouted a little "BANG" flag. Suffice it to say, Crowley was not responsible for that.

"Next thing you'll be telling me angels are real."

Standing halfway between the Winchesters and Crowley, Aziraphale shrugged. For some reason, they continued to ignore him as anything resembling a threat.

"They are real," Sam insisted. He turned to his brother with frustration written all over his face. "Why do you think I've been reading incantations all day? To practice my latin?"

Dean hadn't dropped his gun, but he'd started to gesture with it. His flag waved around limply. "You said it yourself that thing was a hoax."

"Well with you overdue, I've been covering my bases in case _this_ happened!"

"Overdue? What am I, a freaking library book?"

"Dean, be serious."

"On the off-chance that we _could_ summon an angel, don't you think that'd be useful?"

"What if I lose the contract?" Crowley suggested before any further bickering went on. No one in Hell would be happy with that, but it was getting late, and he had some sleep to catch up on.

"Lose it?"

"Look," Crowley pushed his sunglasses up and leaned as far into the doorway as the salt would let him, "I don't want your soul. Believe me. I don't have any place to put it, for one."

"It's true," Aziraphale interjected. "He likes that modern look in his flat. Lots of space and uncomfortable furniture, you know."

"How is that even possible?" Sam asked.

"I think a shop by the name of IKEA is in some part responsible. Do you have any of those here in the Colonies?"

Dean shot a glare at Aziraphale. "Losing the contract, Poindexter, not the interior decorating."

"Contracts get misplaced all the time," Crowley explained, raising his voice to keep the conversation on track. "Bureaucracy is Hell is not merely an expression. Some demons try and cut the paperwork[6], but yours is an important soul so no one can argue my sticking to the rules. I'll claim it now, but I promise not to deliver downstairs until the contract proper, virgin's blood and all, makes it into my hands.

"With the state of Royal Mail these days, I can see to it that it's lost for centuries. That gives plenty of time for you and Sam to live out your lives."

"And for my side to pull a few strings!" Aziraphale chimed in. Crowley noticed the _Steganographia_ was no longer in his hands, or anywhere else in the room for that matter, but there was an odd, book-shaped lump under the leaf of his coat. There might be hope for the angel yet.

"We'll have to think about it."

"Don't take too long," Crowley said as the Winchesters formed an intimate huddle. Aziraphale attempted to "stretch his ears" so to speak, but for the first time in a while, the brothers seemed to care that he was even in the room. With nothing better to do, the angel took up leaning on the other side of Crowley's doorframe.

"What about a car like that one?" Aziraphale said, pointing to the black 1967 Impala.

Crowley rolled his eyes. Aziraphale was hopeless after all.

*

_The Following Week_

"You'd like to declare what, sir?"

Crowley jabbed Aziraphale in the side with his elbow before the words "a soul" could be uttered once more in the presence of the harried customs clerk.

"Just some chocolates," Crowley said, sliding across the appropriate form. Avoiding some paperwork inevitably spawned even more that needed filling out. And technically speaking he'd just _claimed_ the soul, he certainly wasn't going to go about carting it around with him.

"So who is the third choice for Antichrist?" Aziraphale asked as they left Heathrow in an Aston Martin DB5 that Crowley had arranged for[7]. "If the current trend continues, I think I'd rather like to meet him."

"Does that book really hold the key to summoning angels?" Crowley asked, changing the subject by gesturing at the bulge in Aziraphale's coat which the angel most certainly didn't try and declare at the customs desk.

"Only if you have all three volumes and a _De Septum Secundeis_ to decode it with," Aziraphale answered. His cheeks had turned a flattering shade of pink again.

"Huh," Crowley said.

That about summed up everything.

 

* * *

[1]Crowley had insisted the Maserati dealership remove the radio before he'd even consider a purchase. This didn't stop Hell.

[2]A "shut the Hell up" look to be precise, but there's liable to be enough bad humour in this story as is.

[3]One privately chartered transatlantic flight culminating in a lengthy mishap with airport security (in no small part due to Aziriphale's lack of a passport and embarrassing tendency to not lie or approve of demons lying for him), and several flat, uninteresting states later, Crowley had begun to wonder if the angel's desire to "See America with his own eyes" was really much of a holiday at all. 

[4]Metaphorically.

[5]Still metaphorically.

[6]Crowley was (and is) one of those demons, and thanks to a correspondence course he participated in during the decade preceding the 1990s, he's quite good at manipulating his demonic papertrail.

[7]The DB5 proved nicer than the new model Maserati. It still wasn't the same. Crowley did however enjoy knowing what it felt like to drive a car from a James Bond film, especially since it had been bouncing around on the black market since sometime in '97.


End file.
